Meth, children don't mix

Local couple try to piece family back together

DENNY SIMMONS / Courier & Press
Three-year-old Carter studies his mom, Stephanie Best's wedding ring as they visit the children's great-grandparents in Evansville in early March. Carter was briefly taken from Best by state when her husband, Jordan Best, was arrested for manufacturing methamphetamine in April 2011. Their daughterMaKenzie Best, 7 weeks, was content to relax in her baby carrier.

DENNY SIMMONS / Courier & Press

DENNY SIMMONS / Courier & Press
While serving time at Branchville Correctional Facility in Branchville, Ind., Jordan Best says he has learned his lesson and can't wait to be released to start over with his wife and kids. Best was arrested in April 2011 for cooking methamphetamine in his Evansville living room.

DENNY SIMMONS / Courier & Press
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Stephanie Best is handed her 7-week-old baby, MaKenzie Best, from the baby's great-grandmother during a regular visit in early March. MaKenzie was born while her father, Jordan Best, was serving time in Branchville Correctional Facility for manufacturing methamphetamine in April of 2011. Jordan Best is taking part in a drug treatment program in the prison and is hoping to be released sometime this summer.

DENNY SIMMONS / Courier & Press

A big music fan, Carter struts across his great-grandparents' living room singing, "I don't sing. I don't sing," during an early March visit. Nearly a year earlier, Carter was taken into state custody when his stepdad was charged with cooking methamphetamine in the family's living room.

DENNY SIMMONS / Courier & Press

A major consequences of the growth of methamphetamine is the throngs of parents who are so fixed on getting high they are not protecting their children from physical and sexual abuse, according to Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Nick Hermann.

As a result, officials from the state Department of Child Services and Hermann's office say the surge in methamphetamine cases reported in Evansville has forced them to blaze a frontier to protect the youngsters involved.

The state agency protecting the health and welfare of children only started tracking the number of meth-related cases it handled last year. Also, now each child caught in the middle of a meth case is investigated for sexual abuse as a result of the careless lifestyle often led by parents using the drug.

Last year, state family services opened 252 cases with children caught in the middle of meth investigations. That is more than half the 428 abuse cases from a region that also includes Gibson, Knox, Pike, Posey and Warrick counties, said Virginia Combs, regional manager for the Department of Child Services.

Over the past year, Combs said, her employees also have gone through specific training to handle meth-related cases

and properly track them for data.

"Our computer system isn't designed to help point out how many cases we received in 2010," Combs said. She said there are "a lot of unknown issues when it comes to how kids will react if they're exposed."

The scramble to understand the impact of meth on Vanderburgh County children emerged as the one-pot method of meth lab production became popular at the beginning of 2010. In the meantime, Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Nick Hermann said many of the cases reported to his office included varying degrees of child abuse.

"That's something that we're just now realizing," Hermann said. "Now, we realize that we need to interview these kids. Someone has to do something for these kids, and we're trying to do everything we can."

Hermann said the one-pot method has brought the manufacturing of meth from sparsely populated areas near farming communities where anhydrous ammonia is used as fertilizer, to urban areas like Evansville. And in its midst, children of addicts are exposed to the drug culture at home.

"Meth cooks are typically neglectful parents," Hermann said. "Part of the disease or drug is that you get so caught up in it that you forget your children."

Members of the Evansville Police Meth Suppression unit said signs of children inside homes where one-pot labs were discovered are common.

Detective Brock Hensley agreed with Hermann that many meth-manufacturing cases involve suspects more interested in feeding addiction than parenthood.

"I would say if there are not kids there, there is at least evidence of children at the home," Hensley said.

Evansville resident Stephanie Best, 21, said becoming involved in making meth using the one-pot method was out of financial desperation. She and her husband, 22-year-old Jordan Best, had fallen on hard times raising her now three year old son, Carter. Both were raised by parents who faced drug addiction and swore not to embark on the same lifestyles that left them in the care of extended family.

On April 11, 2011, Jordan Best was arrested and later convicted on charges of manufacturing methamphetamine and neglect of a child. Evansville Police Department reports provided by Hermann show detectives were tipped off to meth production at the couple's home in the 1600 block of East Michigan Street. Jordan Best was sentenced in September and has since taken on a drug rehabilitation program at the Branchville, Ind., Correctional Facility. Jordan Best said he could be released as early as June, depending on his performance in the rehab program.

"You do not know how badly I feel for what happened," Jordan Best said during a recent interview in prison. "This place has shown me how badly I messed up."

Best said he resorted to making meth as a last-ditch effort in a failed lifestyle of drug dealing. He had marijuana in the past, but his marriage placed him on a track toward lawful employment at a North Side factory.

"But then I met someone who could get me some weed for cheap, so I started selling," Best said. "But then that guy moved away and my supply had dried up."

Best said he tried meth a couple of years ago, but preferred the high from prescription pills. He watched a friend make meth using the one-pot method. And with his pot supply gone, he turned to meth to pay bills.

"We had rent due and I had my truck payment due," Best said. "I didn't want to ask my family for help because I wanted to show them I could handle things."

Police reports show his solution was to make meth and sell it on the street. Stephanie Best told police she helped her husband purchase ingredients such as pseudoephedrine to make the drug, but did not think her husband was the cook.

"We had to think about it, and, we had someone willing to give us $50 for a box of (pseudoephedrine)," she said. "I didn't think Jordan would be the one making it."

The morning of April 11, Stephanie, who was asleep in a bedroom, was awakened up by Jordan.

"Jordan was crying and knocking on the door, and he told me the cops were there," she said. "I never, ever thought this could have ever happened.

"It's like you'd hear about it on TV and be, like, 'those parents are awful.'"

Police reports show Evansville-Vanderburgh Joint Drug Task Force members found meth-making materials throughout the apartment. The odor of gas from meth production in the apartment also was abundant. Police at the Best home called State Child and Family Services officials to make sure Stephanie's son was safe.

"They took off all his clothes and put this blanket on him that looked as if it was made from Styrofoam packing peanuts," she said. "Then they gave him a drug test — this Popsicle with a cotton swab on the end. I never thought I would ever see my son be given a drug test — it was awful."

Stephanie Best said state workers took custody of her child, but negative results for meth assured his return. It was a period in the marriage she felt like walking away. But with a baby on the way, the couple reconciled. Now, with Jordan's infant daughter MaKenzie, Stephanie Best said she will stand behind her husband as he completes his sentence.

"I have to believe that he has learned his lesson and we have gotten through this," said Stephanie Best, who started a nursing program at Ivy Tech earlier this month. "Both of us have been through it before."

Combs said that until the Indiana Legislature steps in with restrictions to the ingredients required for meth, all that is left is education.

"I think we need to educate the community and our workers," Combs said. "Unless the state makes pseudoephedrine a prescription drug, I don't think there's much we can do."

Hermann said the Legislature should allow for a test program of a handful of Indiana counties.

Until then, Kentucky will steam forward toward its own prescription law.

"Let us at least try a small number of counties — I know five, right now, that are willing to do it," Hermann said. "If Kentucky makes (pseudoephedrine) a prescription, I'm not sure what we will do."

The number of meth lab cases, which normally includes far more than one actual lab, is destined to increase this year.

"There are two ways that number could decrease," he said. "We either could see a reduction in labs, which won't happen, or we could stop investigating them as much.